New York needs automatic voter registration, and we need it now

People line-up to vote at the Public School 183 located on 67th Street and 1st Avenue voting early Tuesday morning in Manhattan. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News)

It’s no secret that New York is one of the worst places to vote in the nation.

Nowhere is this more glaring than in our rickety registration system. As New York voters, we must jump through more hoops to register than in just about any other state – we are required to print, stamp, and mail paper forms, and resubmit those forms every time we move. We have to remember to do so at least 25 days (and up to 13 months) before an election, or we are barred from voting.

Advertisement

And even if we manage to navigate those hurdles, we still might show up to our polling place to find that we were purged from the voter rolls. Mayor DeBlasio’s son, Dante, brought his voting card from the Board of Elections to his correct polling location, and was still told he was not on the rolls. Thousands of New Yorkers are denied their right to vote in this manner ever year.

These are voter suppression tactics straight out of the Deep South. They are why New York is an abysmal 48th in the nation in voter turnout. As long as they remain in place, New York not truly a democracy.

But there is a better way.

New York can replace its awful registration system with Automatic Voter Registration (“AVR”), a commonsense reform already passed in both red and blue states that takes the guesswork out of voter registration. AVR would add up to 2 million New Yorkers to the voter rolls, make our electorate younger and more diverse, and significantly boost voter turnout.

AVR is a simple, two-step process: first, eligible voters who interact with certain government agencies – for example, applying for an ID Card at the DMV – are automatically registered to vote. Next, those agencies digitally transfer that information to the Board of Elections. Voters are then given the chance to opt out by mail. It’s that easy. Rather than making voters fill out cumbersome paperwork and stay on top of arbitrary deadlines, the Board of Elections does the heavy lifting.

Unsurprisingly, AVR brings many people into our political process. That’s a big reason why 15 states, including our neighbors in New Jersey and Massachusetts, have adopted AVR since 2015.

Oregon, the first state to pass AVR, found that it made their electorate significantly larger and more diverse. Over 100,000 Oregon voters were added to the rolls via AVR, most of which were unlikely to have registered without AVR. AVR especially boosted registration rates among young people and people of color; in addition, the median income of an AVR voter was significantly lower than that of non-AVR voters. Thanks to AVR, Oregon’s overall turnout rate rose 4.1% in 2016 – by far the highest of any state that year.

Even better, AVR makes our elections more secure. Experts agree that AVR makes our elections less vulnerable to hackers, a major concern after the 2016 elections. In addition, AVR would make it more difficult for the Board of Elections to erroneously purge voters from the rolls, as happened to Dante DeBlasio in 2018 and a staggering 200,000 New York City voters in 2016.

Best of all, we don’t have to worry about how we will pay for it – AVR would actually save money. Arizona found that their switch from a manual voter registration system to an automatic one cut their costs from $.83 per voter to $.04. Other studies have found that AVR saves localities about $3.54 in registration costs per voter.

Above all, AVR could have a massive effect on policy outcomes in New York. With young people, people of color, and low income voters fully able to hold their elected officials to account, Albany will have to become more responsive to the needs of all New Yorkers.

There is good news: now that the Democrats have regained control of the State Senate, New York is likely to pass AVR this year. And there’s even better news: New York has the opportunity to take the best policies from other states that have already adopted AVR.

However, there is some bad news: the Assembly and Senate have dueling proposals, and the Assembly’s proposal is not truly AVR.

The Senate’s proposal includes a back-end system, which automatically adds eligible voters to the rolls without requiring any additional work on the part of the voter. This is the gold standard of AVR. The Assembly’s proposal, in contrast, includes a front-end system, which requires voters to take additional steps to register to vote while they are interacting with the source agency. Front-end systems are far more prone to human error, and far less effective at registering voters: California’s front-end system registered just 60% of eligible voters, while Oregon’s back-end system registered a whopping 94% of eligible voters.

New York has a historic opportunity to fix our democracy. Let’s not waste it by passing an ineffective half-measure. Call your Assembly Member today and let them know you support voting rights for all New Yorkers by adopting a back-end AVR system. Our democracy depends on it.

Advertisement

Fisch, a Greenburgh, N.Y. native, is a third-year student at Harvard Law School.